The
Fourth World Conference on Women was a major human rights
accomplishment for women.It marked the convergence of political and
legal processes to underscore, on a global scale, the centrality
of human rights to the struggle for equality.The Conference Declaration and Platform for Action
is built on a rights framework, invoking the substance and
the language of human rights in every section, and referring
specifically to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women as well as to the other human
rights treaties.

The
Platform for Action must be brought into the new millennium
as a reaffirmation of the global commitment to women’s human
rights made at Beijing in 1995.The Beijing + 5 review provides an opportunity to recommit
to implementation of the Platform with specific reference
to women’s human rights as stated in the CEDAW Convention
and the other international human rights treaties.Conversely, the CEDAW Convention provides a clear framework
for pursuing and monitoring implementation of the Platform
for Action for years to come.

World
conferences such as Beijing—and Teheran (human rights) in
1968, Nairobi (women) in 1985, Rio de Janeiro (environment)
in 1992, Vienna (human rights) in 1993, Cairo (population)
in 1994—are political events that mark global recognition
of major issues and an attempt to find consensus among governments
about approaches to those issues. The preparations and the conferences themselves are
a major political process, engaging governments in discussion
with their constituencies and with other governments to forge
agreements on priorities and commitments.Human rights enforcement is a more legally oriented
process, based on documents and obligations that have the
force of law.The Beijing Conference brought the two processes together, engaging
citizens and governments in a dialogue that was political
in nature but informed by the legal precepts of the human
rights enterprise. Platform implementation, therefore, should
be informed by human rights principles, and assessment of
human rights implementation should be made with reference
to the commitments made in the Platform.

World
Conferences:encapsulating
the political climate

World
conferences are organized to deal with issues “whose time
has come.”The determination
to hold a world conference arises out of discussions within
the United Nations among member states.While world conferences are mounted through the infrastructure
of the United Nations for the member states, the international
donor community and, particularly in recent years, the international
NGO community have played a considerable role.

World
conferences take place in a political context.They involve all the nations of the world, focus on
globally important subjects such as human rights, environment,
and social development, and generate enormous interest from
civil society as well.As
the goal is to arrive at a consensus on issues, proposals
to address them, and, in some cases, commitments, the process
is a classic political exercise in negotiating ideas and language
that most of the participating states can accept if not wholeheartedly
endorse.As the product
of a political process, the final conference document is a
political one, carrying the weight of a consensus achieved
as a result of the events and processes leading up to it.It is essentially an advisory statement, indicating
policies that governments should adopt to achieve the goals
stated by the conference.

The
world conference process has its limitations.The final conference documents do not carry legal obligations,
and the promises are not binding.A change in government or economic climate may result
in a loss of commitment.Conference documents rarely include mechanisms for
measuring or monitoring implementation.Assessments at international levels are not carried
out on a country-by-country basis, allowing governments to
report without fear of close examination.The review process is cumbersome, and assessments
frequently result in generalities that are difficult to apply
on a real-time country level. Implementation and monitoring
therefore require advocacy and watchfulness on policy development
and execution, from both inside and outside government.

But
world conferences should not be dismissed as “merely political.” They are important in that they provide a forum for
extensive discussion of critical issues at national, regional
and global levels. Because very few nations refuse to participate,
and even states that are not members of the UN want to be
included,these conferences
provide an opportunity to air issues on the widest possible
stage.Moreover, in the nineties, the conferences
and their preparatory processes have developed as an opportunity
for the NGO community to define issues and advocate cutting-edge
positions that expand the boundaries of discussion.

As
a direct result of expanded discussion and NGO input, the
world conferences held in the 1990s have culminated in a new
level of attention specifically to the human rights of women.Reference to human rights opens the process to a new
level of assessment, monitoring and advocacy.If world conference commitments are matched
with human rights obligations, review of implementation becomes
a more specific, demanding, and useful exercise.

Referencing
human rights obligations:long-term commitments

Human
rights obligations, as articulated in the international human
rights treaties, are undertaken by States parties with a clear
understanding that they are legal obligations. While the undertaking may be the product of
a particular political moment, the obligation continues indefinitely,
regardless of changes in ruling party or even forms of government.A treaty ratification is a government commitment
for the long term, with obligations to continuously self-monitor,
make changes in legislation and policy, and report periodically
to a body that will examine performance with specificity.With respect to certain treaties, ratification of an
Optional Protocol also subjects the government to scrutiny
of performance relating to specific individuals and events.

The
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women, was adopted in 1979 as the culmination of more
than a generation of efforts to articulate the human rights
of women.As noted
below, the Convention includes rights recognized in earlier
treaties applying specifically to women and incorporates as
well the rights stated in the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights.These two basic human rights treaties include provisions
stating the international obligation of nondiscrimination
(Article 2 of each) and prohibiting discrimination on the
basis of sex (Article 3 of each), but they do not reference
with specificity the obstacles to women’s enjoyment of human
rights.The CEDAW Convention states specific obstacles
and requirements for implementation—and as such is a guide
for eliminating discrimination across the board.

The
heart of the Beijing Platform for Action also is elimination
of discrimination on the basis of sex. Accordingly, the CEDAW Convention, which defines
discrimination against women, is extraordinarily useful as
a guide for policy development to implement the Platform.

Assessing
implementation:monitoring
processes converge

While
the Platform for Action does not include specific monitoring
mechanisms, the political context of world conferences and
specifically of the Beijing process produced a form of accountability
that should not be discounted.As a result of their intense involvement in the Beijing
preparatory process, NGOs all over the world developed expertise
in issue identification, advocacy skills, and the confidence
to apply these skills in dealing directly with their governments.Governments are now inescapably aware of women’s constituencies.Women no longer accept excuses for inaction.And they vote.

At
the same time, NGOs have recently developed expertise in using
the CEDAW Convention and other processes to raise their governments’
level of accountability for treaty implementation.Thanks to efforts by international NGOs and certain
treaty body experts and UN staff, the treaty implementation
and review process, which for many years was very low profile,
government oriented, and a bit of a mystery to NGOs, has become
another avenue of advocacy that can have concrete results.

Accountability
is the essence of monitoring both the Platform for Action
and the CEDAW Convention.The Beijing+ 5 review provides a unique opportunity to demand government accountability
for the promises made to women in every context.

Neither
the Platform for Action nor the CEDAW Convention include clear
indicators by which performance of obligations can be assessed
in all areas.Treaty
experts, government officials, UN specialized agencies and
Secretariat, and NGOs all have useful skills and information
that can be marshaled to develop indicators that would be
invaluable as to both Platform and CEDAW Convention monitoring.Indicators and benchmarks would provide a guide to
sex-disaggregated data collection and make accountability
more readily measurable.This wouldsimplify
collaboration by all parties to define and meet implementation
goals.

World Conferences and Women:Towards the Rights Framework

The
adoption of the 1967 Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women was an early milestone in the process of understanding
women’s rights as human rights.Drafted by the UN Commission on the Status
of Women (CSW), the Declaration was the response to a generally
perceived need to consolidate in one document all the international
standards concerning women’s rights developed in the UN since
1945. These rights
were articulated in individual treaties addressing trafficking
and prostitution (1949), political rights (1952), nationality
of married women (1962), marriage (1962), equal remuneration
for work of equal value (1951), discrimination in employment
(1958), discrimination in education (1958), and racial discrimination
(1965).

With
the Declaration having laid the foundation, the 1968 International
Conference on Human Rights (Teheran) adopted a resolution
on promoting women’s rights in the modern world and a long-term
UN program for advancement of women that became a blueprint
for global action.

The
first global women’s conference organized by the United Nations
was held in Mexico City in 1975.The Conference called for a UN Decade for Women and
proposed drafting of a convention on women’s human rights.The Mexico City conference also marked the first time
that a major NGO gathering was held in parallel with the official
conference.The two
later Decade conferences, Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985),
addressed the rights issues in different ways and are distinguished
primarily as providing opportunities to establish a global
agenda for equality.

In
December 1979, in an action central to the accomplishments
of the Decade for Women, the General Assembly adopted the
first comprehensive international treaty on women’s human
rights. The Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW Convention), based on the 1967 Declaration, further
consolidated the articulation of women’s human rights statedin other treaties, including some ILO conventions. The product of negotiation within a CSW that by that
time had a majority of members from the global South, the
CEDAW Convention addressed both civil and political rights
and economic, social and cultural rights. With the inclusion of articles specifically addressing the issues
of discriminatory custom and tradition andthe rights of rural women, the Convention clearly reflected
the concerns of women in the developing world.
[1]

The
United Nations Decade for Women saw parallel rights-based
and political activities in the drafting and adoption of the
CEDAW Convention and the far-ranging discussions held at theWorld Conferences on Women.Ten years later, these processes converged
at the Fourth World Conference. At Beijing, 189 governments
adopted a human rights approach to equality and women’s empowerment
that aligned with the development issues addressed at the
Decade conferences.

From
Mexico City to Beijing:evolving
a human rights approach to gender equality

At
the first global women’s conference, held in Mexico
City in 1975, women’s rights were considered mainly in
the context of reviewing national legislation to test its
conformity to relevant international instruments, and enforcement
of that legislation.The
idea of a binding international instrument specifically addressing
women’s human rights was discussed, but only as a recommendation.The main topics covered at the Conference included:

-
social questions as they affect women:equal access to social services, migrant women,
the elderly, female criminality, prostitution and trafficking

Proposed
follow-up activities centered on studies and collection of
information to document the situation of women to men and
steps governments could take to improve social services to
place women on a par with men.

In
setting the agenda for the second global women’s conference,
held in Copenhagen
in 1980,the General
Assembly focused on the themes of employment, health and education.The agenda did not even address women’s rights
in a broad context as had the Mexico City conference.This was a reaction to the difficulties that
were being encountered at that time in the CSW to reach agreement
on a comprehensive women’s human rights convention.The choice of agenda items also was a reflection of
the prevailing global emphasis on development and on the achievement
of the goals of the United Nations Development Decades.In the end, the Copenhagen Programme for Action focused
on promoting a significant role for women in the development
process through education, health care, access to the labor
force, and support for their role in agriculture.The Conference skimmed over the question of
women’s human rights.

The
third world conference on women was held in Nairobi at the end of the Decade for Women in 1985.The final document, the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies
to the Year 2000, attributed most forms of inequality, particularly
in the developing world, to “mass poverty and the general backwardness”
[2]
of the majority of the world’s women, rather
than to government failure to recognize universal principles
and standards of justice.It identified “gender” differences—socially
determined factors that lead to discrimination between women
and men—as obstacles to equality.
[3]

Recommendations
proposed in the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies were organized
according to the themes of equality, development and peace.Recommendations under the theme of equality,the most relevant to women’s human rights, focused primarily on de facto rights and on women’s participation
in decisionmaking, the question of multiple legal systems
(customary and statutory), underuse of women’s talents because
of discrimination, discrimination against women in rural areas,
and discrimination in ownership of land and access to credit.Recommendations under the theme of development focused primarily on integration of women into socioeconomic
development.Strategies proposed under the rubric of peace dealt primarily with women in situations
of armed conflict but, notably, included for the first time
attention to violence against women.

Women’s
rights were officially recognized as human rights for the
first time on a global stage, at the World Conference on Human
Rights held in Vienna in 1993.This recognition was largely a result of lobbying by the women’s
NGO community.Moreover,
women’s human rights were understood, consistent with the
CEDAW Convention, to be universal and indivisible and to include
economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and
political rights.The
accomplishment of Vienna—the inclusion of women as full actors
in the human rights enterprise—paved the way for the full
integration of human rights into the women’s development enterprise
at Beijing.

Beijing:centering on rights

Beijing
was the first global conference in which women in development
issues were closely and explicitly linked to women’s human
rights.The Platform
for Action also is the first global political agreement in
which the CEDAW Convention is clearly reflected.
[4]

The
Beijing Platform for Action mentions “rights” approximately
500 times and includes human rights as one of the twelve Critical
Areas of Concern.Signatories
called for restraint from violating women’s human rights and
placed new emphasis on vigorous “promotion” and “protection”
of rights.The Platform for Action “upholds” the CEDAW
Convention (para 7) and notes that since 1985 there had been
many “violations of and failure to protect all human rights
and fundamental freedoms of all women, and their civil, cultural,
economic, political and social rights including the right
to development” (para 42).The Platform calls for protection of a wide range of rights, including:

a. the right to education,b. right to economic resources including property rights (para
166c),
c. right to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value
(para 165a),
d. freedom of association and the right to organize (para 166l)
and 175c),
e. workers’ rights (para 178a), right to collective bargaining
(178h), and
f. the right to participate in government (para 181)

Complementarity
of the Platform and the CEDAW Convention

This
chart, an expansion on one originally developed by the Division
for the Advancement of Women, indicates the relationship between
the Platform for Action’s Critical Areas of Concern and the
CEDAW Convention.

Beijing Platform For Action

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women- CEDAW

Declaration
and Mission Statement:

Commitment
to equal rights as enshrined in

the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CEDAW Convention,
Convention on the Rights of the Child

Recognize
women’s human rights as universal, indivisible, inalienable

Take all necessary measures to eliminate discrimination
against women and girls

Article
1 Definition of discrimination

Article
2 Action obligations

Article
3 Take all appropriate measures, including legislation

Article
4 Temporary special measures

(affirmative
action to eliminate discrimination)

A.Poverty

Article
3Take all appropriate measures, including
legislation

Article
5Modify patterns of conduct to eliminate customary
practices based on stereotypes

Article
16Equality as to ownership, management and
enjoyment of property

General
Recommendation No. 21 (Articles 15, 16)

Beijing Platform For Action

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women- CEDAW

B. Education and training

Article
5 Modify patterns of conduct to eliminate
customary practices based on stereotypes

Article
10 Equality in all areas of education, including
adult education and training

Article
11.1(c) Right to receive vocational education and
training

Article
14.2(d) Rural women’s right to education and training

C. Health

Article
5 Modify patterns of conduct to eliminate
customary practices based on stereotypes

Article
12 Access to health care, including family
planning

General
Recommendation No. 24 (Article 12)

D. Violence Against Women

Article
3 Take all appropriate measures, including
legislation

Article
6 Trafficking

General
Recommendation No. 19 indicates obligations to address violence against
women under each Convention article

E. Armed Conflict

Article
8 Right to represent their governments in
international fora and to participate in international
organizations

Beijing Platform For Action

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women- CEDAW

F.Employment, Economic Structures

Article
5Modify patterns of conduct to eliminate
customary practices based on stereotypes

Article
11Equality in all areas of employment, right
to work, equal pay, benefits, training, social security;
protective legislation to be reviewed periodically

G.Power and Decisionmaking

Article
7Equal participation in public life

Article
8Equal participation in international fora

Article
14.2(e,f)Rural women’s right to organize self-help
groups and cooperatives; participate in community activities

Article
16Equal rights and responsibilities to freely
choose a spouse; during the marriage and its dissolution;
equal rights and responsibilities as to deciding on
having and on raising children, choosing a family name
and an occupation, managing property

General
Recommendation Nos. 21 (Article 16), 23 (Articles 7
& 8)

H.Mechanisms

Article
3Take all appropriate measures to ensure women’s
development and advancement

I.Human Rights of Women

Entire
Convention

J.Mass Media

Article
5Modification of patterns of conduct, to eliminate
prejudice and stereotyping

Beijing Platform For Action

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women- CEDAW

K.Environment

Article
7 & 8Participation in public life and decisionmaking
that affects women’s lives

Article
14Rural women’s participation in development
planning

L Girl Child

All
articles except those that implicitly apply only to
adults

Article
16.1 (d, f)Best interest of the child shall be paramount
in making family decisions; equal decision making as
to number and spacing of children

Article
16.3No child betrothal; minimum age for marriage

From
a rights perspective, thePlatform for Action moves beyond the CEDAW treaty in
some areas and adds breadth to others.For example, it includes an entire section
on violence against women, which is not mentioned in the CEDAW
Convention because in the 1970’s when the Convention was drafted,
the issue had not yet received international attention and
very little hard data and evidence had yet been collected.The Platform section on armed conflict reflects a new
level of attention to and public discussion of the searing
experiences of women caught in war zones.The effect of media on women’s lives and women’s roles as portrayed
in the media, the relationship between women and the environment,
and the special roles and needs of girl children have only
recently been documented as status of women issues.

At
the same time, not all of these newly recognized issues are
addressed from a rights perspective; the language of rights
in the Platform is not invoked to the same degree as to each
Critical Area of Concern.But the Platform and the Convention are complementary.If invoked together, the two instruments along with
other international agreements and treaties constitute a global
basis for advocating gender equality.

Women
and Poverty

This
Critical Area contains the least direct references to rights.It focuses primarily on women and development, but
it does mention rights of women migrants (para 58k) and indigenous
peoples (para 61c).Notably it calls for protection of women’s
right to full and equal access to economic resources, including
the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other
property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technology
(para. 60f). The Convention, negotiated twenty years earlier,
did not directly address the question of poverty, but did
single out rural women in Article 14.Subsequent interpretation of CEDAW has encompassed
the problems of poor women and their need to access economic
resources and social services without discrimination to overcome
conditions of poverty.

Education
and Training

The
Platform calls for education as a human right (para 69).Within this framework it calls for ensuring the rights
of women and girls to freedom of conscience and religion(para
80f), for ratification of the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (80j), and for human rights education
programs for women.It
refers to the right of indigenous women and girls to education;
calls for an international campaign promoting the right of
women and girls to education (87c); to rights of migrant women
(148b) and to the right to self-determination (149a).
[5]
The CEDAW Convention addresses non-discrimination
in education and the need for women and girls to have the
same opportunities as men and boys to all types of education.

Women
and Health

The
Platform states at the outset that “women have the right to
the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical
and mental health” (para 89). Their enjoyment of this right
must be secured throughout the life cycle (para 92). This
Critical Area refers to rights in over two-thirds of the paragraphs
and sub-paragraphs. The section is built on the agreements
reached at the International Conference on Population and
Development (Cairo, 1994) and in some instances has expanded
on the ICPD Plan of Action.Despite the controversy surrounding women’s health,
the 1990s brought considerable evolution in the international
agreements in this important area. The CEDAW Convention addresses
health issues primarily in Article 12;in 1998 the Committee adopted a General Recommendation
on women and health taking the Platform into account and building
on scholarship in this area as well as efforts made by NGOs
to examine this issue in a rights framework.

Violence
Against Women

The
Platform states clearly that violence against women violates
and impairs or nullifies women’s enjoyment of their human
rights (para 112).Building
on gains made at the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna,
1993) , this section mentions rights 13 times, including references
to the UN Commission on Human Rights, which is invited to
renew the appointment of the Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women. The CEDAW Convention notably is silent on this
question, but in 1991 the Committee adopted General Recommendation
No. 19, indicating the manner in which each article of the
Convention should be invoked to deal with the issue.

Women
and Armed Conflict

In
this section, the Platform states boldly that “violations
of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict
are violations of the fundamental principles of international
human rights and humanitarian law” (para 131).It repeatedly refers to international humanitarian
law and human rights instruments and calls for non-discrimination
in theirapplication.In particular,
the Platform singles out acts of violence against women, such
as rape, in particular systematic rape, forced prostitution
and other forms of indecent assault and sexual slavery, during
armed and other conflicts (145e).It also addresses the rights of refugee and displaced
women.Article 8 of
the Convention is not so bold, addressing only the right to
participate in international fora and organizations.The Platform expands the discussion, by linking women’s
rights issues to international humanitarian law and other
treaties.

Women
and the Economy

The
Platform makes the link between financial, monetary and commercialand other economic systems and women’s access to economic
resources.It identifies
obstacles to women’s employment, appropriate working conditions
and control over economic resources.It advocates that workers’ rights apply equally to
men and women.Many
of its provisions can also be found in Article 11 of the CEDAW
Convention.Workers’
rights had been under discussion for years, particularly at
the ILO, and had evolved considerably with respect to women
by the time the CEDAW Convention was adopted.

Women
in Power and Decision-making

Here
the focus of the Platform is fundamentally grounded in the
Convention, but includes more detail on the types of actions,
including training, required to move more women into decision-making
positions.

Institutional
mechanisms

Article
3 of the Convention is very broad compared to this section
of the Platform. The Platform language draws on the experience
of the United Nations Decade for Women, when the question
of national machineries for the advancement of women received
considerable attention as a means to institutionalize advocacy
for gender equality and to monitor progress.Rights as an issue are not an element of the discussion.

Human
Rights of Women

This
section of the Platform, while repetitive of agreements reached
by the international community in other fora, is a core section
of the Platform and represents a breakthrough in evolving
the human rights framework for achieving women’s equality.It encompasses all of the articles of the Convention
and advocates strengthening the Convention and other human
rights instruments in the service of women’shuman rights.It
reiterates in rights terms a number of the provisions found
elsewhere in the Platform, such as protection from violence.It also calls for strengthening the enforcement of
women’s human rights at national level and for an emphasis
on legal literacy for women.This section provides the clearest link between
the Platform and the Convention and includes the single most
successful call for concrete action in the Platform:as per Para 230(k), an Optional Protocol to provide
for individual complaints under the Convention was drafted
by the CSW and adopted by the General Assembly in 1999.

Women
and the Media

The
relationship between women and the media and new technologies,
addressed with considerable attention in the Platform, is
not mentioned at all in the Convention.The Convention, as in other areas that have
emerged for international discussion since the late 1970s,can be read to cover this area, but the Committee
has yet to explore it in any depth.

Women
and the Environment

This
section of the Platform refers to rights only once, notably
in paragraph 253c concerning safeguarding existing intellectual
property rights of women engaged in practices related to traditional
medicine, biodiversity and indigenous technologies. While
women’s interest in and right to protection of the environment
is arguably covered by several articles of the Convention,
the treaty lacks specific language referring to the environment.The efforts of women’s NGOs to define women’s interest
in the environment and to identify women as a special group
for attention in this area took shape during the 1990s in
relation to the International Conference on Environment and
Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992).

The
Girl Child

This
section and others draw on the Convention on the Rights of
the Child.References
to children in Article 16of the CEDAW Convention can be linked to this section,
as can provisions relating to education and health.The CEDAW Convention should be seen as complementary
to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines
the human rights of children—girls and boys equally—to grow
into adults with full human rights as defined in the other
treaties.

Rights and the Platform for Action: Monitoring Promises

The
Platform for Action encompasses a wide range of objectives
that are directly parallel to the rights enumerated in the
CEDAW Convention and other human rights instruments.And like the CEDAW Convention, it emphasizes
the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex as well
as equality between women and men.To the extent that the objectives of the Platform correspond
to civil and political rights, measurements of compliance
can be based on well-established methodologies and standards
for evaluating implementation of human rights treaties dealing
with those categories of rights.Theories of state action (or inaction) as to civil
and political rights and basic concepts of freedom from torture,
freedom of association and speech, right to fair trial, etc,
are sufficiently developed to provide clear measures of compliance
as to those elements of the Platform.

The
Platform also includes numerous economic, social and cultural
objectives that are parallel to the economic, social and cultural
rights enumerated in the CEDAW Convention and the Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.The formulations in these documents present
a problem of assessment, as neither the Platform nor the treaties
include reference to indicators of compliance.The language of the Platform is particularly problematic
in this regard, as words such as “develop,” “enhance,” or
“promote” do not lend themselves to measurement.Moreover, many of the strategies outlined in the Platform
call for gradual steps and programmatic approaches rather
than time-bound, goal-oriented action.Assessment of implementation therefore requires
a conceptual approach that takes these measurement issues
into account, such as progressive realization and measurement
of conduct,
[6]
while incorporating the principle of nondiscrimination.

Assessing
progress

Many
states argue, with respect to both Platform commitments and
human rights treaty obligations, that they do not have adequate
resources or timeto
fully comply with international standards.The concept of progressive realization—a term lifted
directly from the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (Article 2)—has developed to meet those
arguments and provide a standard by whicheven the poorest country can be judged to have
made a positive effort to comply.The Maastricht Guidelines, adopted in 1997,
[7]
require States parties to international treaties
to take certain steps immediately and others as soon as possible
to meet their treaty obligations.The Guidelines reinforce and elaborate upon the Article
2 obligation and its articulation in General Comment No. 3
to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
[8]

Taking
into account a country’s economic status and the concept of
progressive realization, the critical factor in assessing
progress under both the Platform for Action and the CEDAW
Convention is whether women and men are treated equally by
and benefit equally from policies designed to implement rights.If a state argues that resources are inadequate for
full implementation, under both the CEDAW Convention and the
Platform, even partial implementation must benefit women and
men equally.

Measurement
of implementation requires analysis of data gathered over
time, preferably disaggregated into relevant categories.Such data are dramatically lacking as to women and
girls.Moreover, there
is little formal agreement on the international level as to
appropriate indicators or benchmarks for assessing progress
over time.Some countries have undretaken participatory
processes to identify indicators that can be accepted by governments
and NGOs.

One
possibility for advancing international agreement as to relevant
indicators or benchmarks would be an examination of the Concluding
Comments of the CEDAW Committee, the Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, and the Comittee on the Rights
of the Child, as well as the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendations
and the CESCR’s General Comments.The Concluding Comments indicate the respective committees’
concerns with specific implementation issues and specific
practices.The General
Recommendations/General Comments reflect the Committees’ analysis
of the most important elements of certain rights.These commentaries, taken together, could provide
insight into the most significant areas in which indicators
should be developed.And
they certainly can provide an immediate reference point for
review of Platform implementation.

The concept of core obligations is linked to that of progressive implementation.A state that lacks resources to fully implement an
economic or social right can and should be evaluated, at the
least, in terms of meeting a minimum level of obligation.The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
has indicated that as to that treaty, there exists a minimum
core obligation not to deprive “any significant number of
individuals of [all the rights in the Covenant, including]
. . . essential foodstuffs, of essential primary health care,
of basic shelter and housing, or of the most basic forms of
education . . .”
[9]
Core obligations refer only to a baseline requirement;
the mandate of progressive realization requires that states
allocate increasing resources to implementation as their economies
grow.And the principle of nondiscrimination, included
in the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as
well as the CEDAW Convention, requires states to implement
even the core obligations in a nondiscriminatory manner.

This
approach would be extremely useful in evaluating implementation
of Platform commitments.The Commission on the Status of Women and CEDAW
Committee could define, and governments could state whether
they have met, a minimum standard of performance with respect
to, for example, delivering health care to women and girls,
or providing training for employment in all sectors, or training
police to deal appropriately with instances of violence against
women.Evaluation
could include both statistical indicators and examination
of practices.

Since
1995 the Commission on the Status of Women has taken up discussion
of each of the Critical Areas of Concern with a view to identifying
measures for accelerated implementation of proposed strategies.The CSW’s recommendations have been very broad and
nonspecific as to measuring change or assessing results in
light of goals and objectives.This is in part because the Platform itself, as a negotiated document,
provides very few measurable targets.However, the post-Beijing appraisals could have moved the discussion
toward development of indicators for measuring progress.The Beijing + 5 review provides an opportunity
to do so on a large scale and with a global commitment.

Obligations
of conduct and obligations of result

Both
the Platform and the CEDAW Convention call for governments
to develop policies and programs to achieve equality.Indicators for assessing implementation of policies
and programs—meeting obligations of conduct—will differ from
indicators for assessing results.Neither type of indicator has yet been well developed,
and those relating to conduct are notoriously difficult to
define.

Some
of the CEDAW Committee’s questions to States parties during
country reviews, and the Committee’s Concluding Comments,
indicate the importance of changing conduct as well as the
possible content of conduct indicators.Such indicators could be qualititative or descriptive,
indicating practices that seem promising in terms of results.They also could be quantitative, measuring the number
of women who use particular services as a proportion of the
population.The most difficult task in developing indicators
of conduct is to explore the relationship between certain
practices or services and the desired results.For example, does a policy of compulsory education
through grade six result in (a) provision ofeducational services available to all girls; (b) full
attendance by girls; (c) increased literacy rates?The Beijing + 5 review could promote discussion of
this issue and recommend documentation of promising practices
with an obligation to report on their effectiveness in reaching
women.

At
the same time, the essence of the enterprise is results.While statistical indicators abound, their adequacy
and their meaning remain under debate.Does an increased literacy rate for girls, for example,
as called for in the Platform, correlate to real improvement
in their lives—better jobs, greater participation in family
and community decisionmaking, later marriage?Or do the policies and the analysis of their effect
have to be better developed—to examine content of curriculum,
promotion and support of different types of education for
girls, support of changes in family dynamic to promote their
release from traditional expectations and household duties?

The
Beijing + 5 review could include discussion of indicators
that have been developed on a national or regional basis,
as well as the indices of nondiscrimination developed for
the United National Development Program’s Human Development
Report:the GDI, measuring disparities between the
accomplishments of men and of women and the extent to which
capabilities are expanding; and the Gender Empowerment Measure,
which examines whether women and men actively participate
in economic and political life and in decisionmaking.

The
Commission also could recommend documentation of practices
that seem promising, for wider application.Indeed, the current review could include descriptions
of such practices, documented to show relevance and results.

The
Commission could call on the UN specialized agencies, which
have conducted some of this analysis, to cooperate in an effort
to develop indicators.It
also could call on the Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights to support the analysis, as indicators are critical
to evaluation of treaty implementation as well.The Report of the Seminar on Appropriate Indicators
to Measure Achievement in the Progressive Realization of Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights
[10]
invited the UN specialized agencies to
develop indicators to measure human rights implementation.The moment may have arrived for human rights experts
and experts from the specialized agencies to address the issue
of indicators.The
CSW could provide an impetus towards action by dealing directly
with it in the Beijing + 5 review.

Further
commitments to action undertaken in the Beijing + 5 review
should be stated with a view to establishing a baseline for
monitoring progress in Platform implementation over the next
five years.Governments
should present in their statements to the Preparatory Committee
and the Special Session, information on the indicators and
benchmarks they have applied to assess their progress, together
with examples of successful practices linked to Platform objectives
and strategies.States
parties to the CEDAW Convention should indicate the link between
their implementation of the Platform and their progress in
meeting obligations under the Convention.Where resources are deemed to be limited or new initiatives
have been in place for only a short time, reporting should
focus on meeting core obligations, with due attention to the
principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of sex.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The
Beijing + 5 review offers an opportunity for the United Nations
and NGOs to constructively revisit the commitments made in
the Platform for Action, evaluating progress and committing
to new methods of implementation and monitoring.The discussion cannot be effective without consistent reference
to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women, the principles of which pervade the Platform.The results of the review can provide guidance to both the Commission
on the Status of Women and the United Nations human rights
bodies, particularly the Committee on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women, for more effective
promotion and monitoring of progress toward achievement of
women’s human rights.To
that end, the following recommendations are offered:

Governments

Include
in reports to CSW as the preparatory body, and to the General
Assembly in its Beijing + 5 review, information on the indicators
and benchmarks they have used to assess their own progress
in Platform implementation, together with examples of successful
practices.Where resources
are limited or new initiatives have been in place for a short
time, reporting should focus on meeting core obligations.

CSW

Incorporate
into the Beijing + 5 review and future monitoring a framework
for analysis that takes into account the human rights commitments
made within the Platform for Action.Develop
a method of appraising progress under the Platform for Action
that takes into account accomplishments and shortfalls on
a country basis, along the lines, for example, of the NGO
Report Card.

Encourage
efforts by the Division for the Advancement of Women, the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the
UN specialized agencies, to formulate indicators for the monitoring
of women’s human rights implementation under the international
human rights instruments taking the Platform for Action into
account. In this regard, the efforts of ECOSOC and the
UN system to agree on development indicators, as well as the
indicators developed by UNDP for its Human Development Report,
should be taken into account.

CEDAW

Revise
the Guidelines Regarding the Form and Content of Initial Reports
of States Parties, No. 8, to require greater specificity in
linking the content of country reports to the commitments
under the Platform for Action, and include questions on that
linkage in the constructive dialogue with governments.

Examine
General Recommendations and Concluding Comments to identify
factors that the Committee considers critical to implementation
and make this analysis available to States Parties and to
the CSW.

Develop,
in conjunction with its general recommendations, indicators
of conduct and a statement of core obligations under each
article, taking into account the principle of nondiscrimination
on the basis of sex, and actively use these tools to assist
in monitoring government performance under the Convention.

Notes

[1]
For a discussion of the negotiations
on the draft Convention, see Lars Adam Rehof, Guide to the Travaux Preparatoires of the United Nations Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Netherlands: Maartius
Nijhoff Publishers, 1993).

[2]
Forward-Looking Strategies
to the Year 2000, Third
World Conference on Women para.44.

[3]
Ten years later, the concept
of “gender” came under attack during preparations for the
Fourth World Conference. Despite long-established usage of the term, certain
governments indicated severe discomfort and attempted to
eliminate the concept from the Platform.

[4]
The development of the rights
framework for Beijing reflects a massive international NGO
effort to define the rights issues and effectively monitor
and participate in the UN and regional preparatory processes. The United Nations supported considerable NGO access
to the process, particularly during the 1995 CSW preparatory
session and the Beijing conference, and many governments
included NGOs on their delegations. Much of the Platform language was heavily contested; NGOs, working
with certain governments, provided insight, support, and
lobbying to move the agenda towards greater emphasis on
rights as well as expanding the boundaries of the entire
discussion.The Platform section on the Girl
Child, for example, was added after the African regional
preparatory meeting, at which the official meeting adopted
the section almost verbatim from a proposal by a core group
of concerned African NGOs. The language of Para 2, reiterating that human rights are universal,
inalienable, and indivisible, was heavily negotiated, with
considerable input from NGOs. The paragraph referring to inheritance (274d) reflects
a compromise between African governments, which supported
an unequivocal statement of full equality in inheritance
that would fly in the face of most African customary law,
and Islamic states, which resisted language that appeared
contrary to the Shar’ia law on inheritance. The African governments’ position reflected considerable
influence by NGOs, which had focused for years on inheritance
as a critical issue of discrimination under customary law.

[5]
The reference to self-determination
represents a political compromise somewhat unrelated to
the question of education.

[6]
For a basic, authoritative
outline of these and related concepts, see The Maastricht
Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 20 Human Rights Quarterly, 691 (1998).